As World Cup draws near, KC restaurants grow uncertain: Will crowds show up?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Restaurants and bars are uncertain if crowds of 450,000–650,000 visitors will arrive.
- Owners cite lower flight and hotel bookings, high travel costs and visa bond rules.
- Local venues are expanding hours and staffing while keeping plans flexible.
Lara Gray, the owner with her husband, Kyle, of the Casual Animal Brewing Co. — sitting at 1725 McGee St., only blocks from where thousands of soccer fans in June and July are expected to pour into Kansas City’s 2026 FIFA World Cup Fan Festival — spent five hours last week steaming the folds out of the 48 flags that now dangle from the rafters of her brewery.
Each one represents a nation playing in the month-long tournament, including the teams using the KC-area as their home base: Argentina, Algeria, England and the Netherlands.
The one question that’s left hanging — not only in Gray’s mind, but also in those of bar and restaurant managers across the Kansas City area — is whether the predicated deluge of 650,000 fans will follow.
With less than six weeks to go before the June 16 match between Argentina and Algeria at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, they insist the answer is uncertain, even among those whose businesses will be at the presumed center of the action, near 2026 FIFA Fan Festival.
“The news hasn’t made it feel great,” Gray said of the growing number of accounts of airline flights and hotel bookings at lower-than-expected numbers.
‘Peaks and valleys of emotions’
Those number are believed to be a symptom of other factors that include high gas prices, high game ticket prices ranging from $1,000 to $90,000 each, and still-high hotels rates of $500-plus a night. Geopolitics, centered around the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, has also played a role.
In August 2025, the Trump administration, announced the start of a ”Visa Bond Pilot Program” — effective Aug. 20, 2025 to Aug. 5, 2026 — requiring residents of 50 countries to post bonds of between $5,000 to $15,000 to enter to the United States. The money would be returned once the visa holder departs the U.S.
The list also includes five World Cup nations: Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Tunisia and Algeria, which has chosen Lawrence, Kansas., to be its home base.
Gray is opting to remain positive.
“What I tell people, is that there are peaks and valleys of emotions,” she said. “Right now I’m on an upswing. Historically, the World Cup is a big deal.”
So she is hoping history repeats itself. Gray said she’s found encouragement in talking to a Balkan business networking group, officials from FIFA and others tied to European soccer who feel confident that fans will arrive.
“I think the best way that somebody put it,” she said, “was, ‘Look, Europeans travel very differently than American. They’ll wake up one day and just say, ‘Let’s go on vacation.’ Americans need two to five months to plan a vacation. He said people are coming, but it may not be until the very last minute.”
So Gray is gearing up with a plan to staff each week day at the brewery at the same level as on weekends. She plans to expand hours. Typically open from noon to 10 p.m., the brewery will open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
She’s entered into a pilot collaboration with Affäre, the German restaurant in the Crossroads, 1911 Main St., to provide bratwurst and other food.
She wants all staff available.
“We put a moratorium on anybody taking time off during the five weeks,” Gray said. “That hurts my heart, because if it ends up being nothing, we’ve made everybody stay in down during the summer.”
Optimistic that FIFA fans will come
Andy Frye, the general manager of Up-Down Arcade Bar at 101 Southwest Blvd — an indoor-outdoor bar which is also only blocks from the site of the fan festival at the National World War I Museum of Memorial — also remains optimistic.
“Our expectation right now is for a whole lot of visitors,” Frye said. “We’re going off of the general consensus of the people running the World Cup. We’ve heard anything from 450,000 to 650,000.”
The bar, which features arcade games, is already decked out with World Cup signs and banners and a rotating FIFA-like trophy topped by a soccer ball. Frye said the plan is to expand their hours, to open at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. every day during the tournament, as opposed to the normal opening at 3 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. on weekends.
“If we aren’t breaking any rules, I want to say open until at least 3 a.m.,” he said.
Frye said he plans to work at the bar 50 days straight. They’re adding two auxiliary bars and keeping their “extended patio,” meaning a closed-off part of the parking lot, open for the duration of the tournament. They’re adding umbrellas and shade screens for the summer sun. While they typically rotate a crew of 40 to 45 employees, “I’m trying to get 60-plus,” he said.
“I know people are scared,” Frye said of the possibility of smaller-than-expected crowds. “I’ve been around this industry since I was 10 years old. I tell my friends that are in the bar industry or the restaurant industry: Be over-prepared. I know it can be tough.
“I know it can make costs hurt a little bit. And you may, unfortunately, have some people that are expecting a lot more than what is given. But you don’t want to be under prepared.”
Frye said that his bar prospered in April 2023 when Kansas City hosted the NFL Draft.
“I know that wasn’t the experience for a lot of folks,” he said.
Don’t know what to expect
Indeed, for many merchants, the draft was a financial bust. Fans who attended remained mostly in and around the draft site, which was also held on the World War I museum grounds. For many bar and restaurant managers, a prime fear is that World Cup could turn out to be more of the same.
Uncertainly over what to expect has left many hoping and planning for the best, but also understanding that perhaps numbers could very well be smaller than as originally touted.
Craig Moncrief, general manager of Harvey’s at Union Station, said that he had given the World Cup only preliminary thought. He first had to get through Mother’s Day, serving 1,600 people in six hours. He had already hired new staff for the summer, so he was not concerned about that.
“I mean, we’re just — we don’t know what to expect,” Moncrief said. “Right now we’re on a holding pattern, no joke to see what happens. We don’t know yet. . . .We’re just going to play it by ear and see what happens.”
Tim Watters, the general manager of Pierpont’s at Union Station was similarly uncertain of their plans. During their peak season — between Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve — the restaurant generally adds a lunch service. Watters said they do not anticipate doing so during the World Cup.
“I would say, I don’t know what to expect. I don’t think anybody does,” said Kristine Hull, owner of Fox and Pearl, a west side restaurant at 2143 Summit St.
Hull said the only definite plan they have is to add an automatic 20% gratuity to all bills beginning on June 1 to the end of July to adjust for the difference in European and U.S. tip culture. In many European countries, patrons are unaccustomed to tipping, whereas in the U.S. tips account for a large portion of restaurant workers’ incomes.
“Front of house, back of house: Every employee is reliant on that,” she said.
‘Not holding my breath’
Hull said that, thus far, they have seen none of the expected rush for reservations or booking of special parties.
“We thought we would see a lot of reservations and a lot of private events,” she said. “And early on, I would say maybe January, I was getting a lot of people reaching out, looking for spaces. Then the lines kind of went dead. I actually had kind of the inverse effect.”
People who had booked the restaurant for June weddings, Hull said, rebooked their events for later in the year because they said they didn’t want to compete with the crush of people or traffic during the World Cup. But the reservations that empties out in June, she said, never filled up.
At least one party from the Netherlands that was looking to book during the tournament, on the verge of signing the contract, decided they no longer were attending the games. Hull doesn’t know the reason.
“I’ve talked to friends of mine at hotels, and they said they’re not even at full capacity,” she said. “Event spaces that thought they were going to try to do stuff are now freaking out.”
Hull said her plan is “play it calm.”
“I mean, if the books start to ramp us, I have 40 employees. We can make a Monday staffed like a Friday or Saturday, pretty easily. We’ll see. I’m treating it like it’s any other day. The worst thing that could happen is the best thing that could happen: I have 200 people at the door. That would be great for us. . . I’m not holding my breath.”
Hoping for the best
At La Bodega, a Spanish tapas restaurant, 703 Southwest Blvd., is equally uncertain of what to expect.
“I don’t know what to think, not to lead off with that, but I’ve heard conflicting reports,” said Robert Riekhof, the restaurant’s general manager.
Riekhof said that, overall, “We’re kind of anticipating to be pretty busy,” primarily because of their location and the type of food they serve. “All over the world, people know tapas, probably more so than in Kansas City.”
But as a far a plan, he said, “we’re obviously going to try to keep it simple.” They may unveil an app that translates the menu into various languages. They also hope to do more business with pedestrians.
“We’re trying to design something where we’re going to have a lot of grab-and-go,” Riekhof said, including skewers, food cooked on an outdoor grill, churros and perhaps sangria. He said they may also transform a building they currently use for catering into a sandwich stand.
Although huge crowds are not 100% percent certainty, Riekhof said he is apt to think its close. Time will tell.
“I mean, personally,” he said, “and I think much of the management, staff, and the ownership here would say that we’re probably 80%, 85% yes that we’re going to have big crowds.
